The federal agency presented a nearly 5,000-page prosecution complaint with attachments and a list of witnesses and evidence gathered before a special court. Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Ranchi and named Singhal, Suman Kumar, a chartered accountant who is allegedly linked to him, and a few others.
Officials said the ED requested the court to take cognizance of the chargesheet and issue a process to hear the case.
Singhal, a 2000-batch IAS officer, was arrested by the agency in May as part of its probe into alleged embezzlement. MGNREGA Fund and some other alleged suspicious financial transactions.
The 44-year-old bureaucrat was suspended by the Jharkhand government soon after his arrest. She was posted as Industries Secretary and was holding the charge of Secretary, State Mines and Geology Department in an additional capacity.
Sumer Kumar has also been arrested. Both of them are in judicial custody.
The ED had first raided the premises of Singhal, her businessman husband Abhishek Jha and chartered accountant in Ranchi on May 6 and covered some other places in the state.
The agency had claimed that it allegedly seized Rs 17.79 crore in cash from Kumar’s residence and office premises. After these arrests, it also interrogated several state government officials.
Seeking Singhal’s custody in May, the ED had told the court that a multi-specialty hospital in Ranchi owned by the officer and his family was allegedly being used by a bureaucrat to “spoof” the tainted money. and the health facility was heavily paid for. Usually received in cash.
The ED, citing the statements of some of the witnesses examined earlier, told the court that Singhal “played a key role in the construction of Pulse Super Specialty Hospital and management of important cases and received huge payments in cash.”
It had claimed that an investigation found that Singhal had earlier transferred Rs 16.57 lakh from his personal accounts to three bank accounts owned or controlled by chartered accountants.
It alleged that the chartered accountant recorded his statement with the ED under PMLA and stated that “most of the cash recovered from her house belonged to Pooja Singhal, which she collected on her behalf”.
The ED had alleged, “He disclosed that on the instructions of Pooja Singhal, he had given Rs 3 crore in cash to a renowned builder to buy land for Pulse Hospital, owned by Pooja Singhal and her family.”
The probe pertains to a money laundering case in which Ram Binod Prasad Sinha, a former junior engineer in the Jharkhand government, was arrested by the agency on June 17, 2020, from West Bengal after studying an FIR under PMLA in 2012. of the State Vigilance Bureau against him.
Sinha was booked under criminal sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) relating to cheating and corruption, for allegedly duping public money and giving it in his name as well as that of his family members. He was invested to work as a Junior Engineer. From 1 April 2008 to 21 March 2011.
The agency had earlier said that the said funds were earmarked for execution of government projects (under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, in Khunti district).
Sinha told the ED that he “paid 5 per cent commission out of the fraudulent funds to the district administration”.
The probe agency claimed that various allegations of “irregularities” were leveled against Singhal during the period while he served as the Deputy Commissioner/District Magistrate of Chatra, Khunti and Palamu between 2007 and 2013.
The ED told the court that “Sinha was giving bribe to Pooja Singhal”, citing the statement of an unidentified accused recorded earlier.
“He (accused) has confessed that on four occasions he had seen the accused junior engineer (Sinha) handing over bags containing 18-20 bundles of Rs 500 notes.”
The ED, citing the statement of a witness, said that it used to keep the money given by Sinha to the bureaucrat in a “closed bag” and later handed it over to Singhal.